Rental Operations

Car Rental Rates Trend Upward in January

February 14, 2012
• by Staff

With the help of Michael Meyer of Rate-Highway Inc. and Jim Tennant of The Tennant Group, Auto Rental News publishes monthly auto rental rate surveys for six major cities: Boston, Miami, Chicago, Houston, Seattle and Los Angeles. The rates are based on weekly surveys.

Analysis and commentary provided by Jim Tennant of The Tennant Group. This survey is dated Feb. 13. (Click on the charts and graphs for a larger view.)

These tables and graph show the average of all base rate quotes per day for an ICAR at the six airports shown for arrivals 15 to 21 days ahead of the date of the survey, for two- and seven-day rentals. If the arrival date is a Friday or Saturday, the two-day rate will be a weekend rate, otherwise it will be a regular rate.

After bottoming out in the third and fourth week of December, the 6 City Average rates climbed steadily from the last week of December through January. The Jan. 27 average of $47.76 was 74% above the Dec. 23 low of $27.47.

Rate data provided by Rate-Highway, a provider of revenue management services for the auto rental industry. Rates are an average of aggregator/OTA rates for all vendors present in the markets listed on the date of the survey.

With the exception of LAX, the individual cities followed the same pattern, all climbing steadily from late December through January. LAX rates were a little more erratic. However, the size of the increase varied considerably, from a 22% increase in LAX to 107% in Miami.

The quotes were for rates two to three weeks out, which shows that south Florida is anticipating a strong second half of February. Interestingly, Chicago and Houston had the highest quotes, both slightly more than $60 in the Jan. 27 pull.

Rental Operations

Enterprise’s Assistant Vice President of Technology Innovation, Derik Reiser, spoke at the conference as one of four participants in a panel discussion sponsored by the Society of Collision Repair Specialists.

Thanks to the preferred partnership with Sixt as a direct provider, the Thomas Cook and partner travel agencies can offer their customers clear increases in value on their journeys, like access to a broad premium fleet of numerous vehicle classes, high-quality services, and an attractive price performance ratio.

With rental facilities located on military bases throughout the U.S. and in Germany, Enterprise is uniquely positioned to provide U.S. military members and their families with unmatched convenience and world-renowned customer service through every step of the car rental process.